I still have the lime here (Mrs. Wages brand) and it did help to hold the cukes a bit firmer for the all vinegar sour pickles. I do not use alum anymore and because it still seems to be linked to aluminium and allzheimers I was not going to even try going any further with it. The lime was used, and the whole cukes were soaked in it for 24 hours in the fridge. I used huge stainless steel bowls that take up a whole shelf in the fridge. I cut off the tips of both ends prior to the soaking, They did get a long rinse afterwards, but even for that, there was a bit of white sediment in the brine after a few days. I also used a bit of tumeric for some color. They were quite pungent. I could have even added a bit of my acid blend and made them even more potent.. My sours are not fermented. They are just 100% plain white distilled vinegar, salt, and a little tumeric. My pickled pepperoncini are also done that way, but without the tumeric. My half sours are just a salt brine with a dash of vinegar added after they sit on the counter overnight. Ive also use the pickling lime for making some sweet mixed, but it was just for the cukes to soak in first. The amount of alum used in a 7 quart batch of sour pickles was something like about 2-3 teaspoons for the toatl amount of vinegar brine. With Pickle Crisp, you do have as slight flavor of chlorine, but that tends to dissipate once they are opened and allowed to 'breath' a few minutes before serving. A chilled pickle always seems to be a bit crunchier than at room temp. FYI> Rumford brand baking powder has no alum in it. Baking soda is basically bicarbonate of soda and nothing else. There is also a bakers ammonia that is still used today for some Swedish cookies and pasteries. I can't taste Pickle Crisp, but that might be because of the heat of the peppers, or the strength of the flavors and spices I use in regular pickles. Mrs. Wages and Ball mixes are the primary ingredients I use when making spiced pickles, and I add extra spices like dill, celery seeds, mustard seeds and such to the various kinds of pickles.There is nothing worse (besides a sour or mushy cuke) than a bland tasting pickle. A recent America Test Kitchen episode dealt with making a flaky pastery for a big berry tart. They mixed the butter and flour to a very course mix, then used their palms to press the flour into the butter lumps. This helped to spread the butter into thinner bits. Ever made puff pastry? I have, with excellent results. MUCH better than the Pepperidge Farm frozen stuff. It does take a long time, a cold work surface, lots of patience and lots of rolling between each chilling.

Pickle Crisp does work against you when doing sweet pickles with sugar added to the brine. Because Linda Lou's recipe uses a salt brine to essentially remove a lot of the water from the cukes, it leaves them open for the penetration of the vinegar and sugar. With the addition of the calcium chloride of Pickle Crisp, it will tend to break down the cukes a little and have a negative effect on crispness. Because the fermented salt brine method to making these unusual sweet pickles makes the cukes a bit less watery by its nature, they do act a little different when they are stored in sugar and vinegar. I don't think it would be the same if they were not sweetened with regular sugar, or if Splenda or some other artifical sweetener was used instead of sugar. My 32 ounce jar of bulk Calcium Chloride is almost 1/4 gone already. I use it ONLY for my dills, sweets without sugar, and my pepperoncini pickled peppers in full strength vinegar and salt. The pickling cukes actually suffer in taste and texture if you peel them, even for a fresh salad. Its not necessary for most any pickling cuke to be peeled. As to bitterness, it cannot be bred out of the cucumbers, no matter what they say about bitterless or burpless varieties. Usually it occurs early in the season when there are only a few flowers and the plant is not big yet. Once the cukes get into the summer growing season, they tend to be much more reliable and you will be hard pressed to find a bitter one then. Even for that, when I am picking early ones, I try to taste each cuke with a small slice near the stem end to see if it has any bitterness. If so, its tossed. There is nothing worse to throw off a nice jar of pickles if you come across a single slice (or slices) of a bitter cuke. No amount of vinegar, salt, sugar, or spices will hide its awful taste. I have had my share of bitter ones, and most have been from seeds that said they had no bitters.

I happened to have Food Tv on when I went to bed wayyy late last night and Alton Brown was making his own crispy onions. He did them in the oven. He sliced very finely, then tossed with a little flour and a little bit of panko, some salt, then put on a greased baking sheet in a 475 oven for 30 minutes, tossing them every ten minutes. They looked quite good. Ah, I found the recipe. Here it is. He used onions instead of shallots, but I'd sure love the shallots instead. Smiles. From Alton Browns Green Bean Casserole Ingredients For the topping: 2 medium onions, thinly sliced 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons panko bread crumbs 1 teaspoon kosher salt Nonstick cooking spray Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F. Combine the onions, flour, panko and salt in a large mixing bowl and toss to combine. Coat a sheet pan with nonstick cooking spray and evenly spread the onions on the pan. Place the pan on the middle rack of the oven and bake until golden brown, approximately 30 minutes. Toss the onions 2 to 3 times during cooking. Once done, remove from the oven and set aside until ready to use.

Will check out the suggested recipes. I spent some time on the King Arthur site and took note of the graham crackers, as it happens, and also of the animal crackers. One of the problems with baking in Italy is how many ingredients that are common in the U.S. can't be found here, at least not in the country: Milan or Florence might be a different story. Our local small supermarket is not currently carrying oatmeal (it was expensive anyway). Also unavailable: molasses, wheat germ, buttermilk, sour cream, buckwheat, rye, hard wheat flours (buckwheat flour used to be available, but not lately), dried currants and cherries, pecans, cranberries fresh or dried. Water pack pie cherries, though there's an abandoned orchard down the road. Pumpkin pack, though we get a fine substitute by roasting winter squash. Reliable dried yeast: I only use fresh now. Walnuts are very expensive. Vanilla and almond extract come in miniscule individual vials: my last trip to the U.S. I brought back bottles of both. We still eat well, but I really had to revise a lot of my cooking, and baking in particular. Also I'm a healthy cook, and getting older, both of which have caused changes in my cooking. We have good produce here, and the cheeses are sublime, though mostly I limit myself to a bit of Parmesan.